Nations around the world reacted with alarm Wednesday after President Donald Trump announced a halt to the sizable funding the United States sends to the World Health Organization. Health experts warned the move could jeopardize global efforts to stop the coronavirus pandemic, ABC News reported.
At a briefing in Washington, Trump said he was instructing his administration to halt funding for the WHO pending a review of its role “in severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus.” The United States is WHO’s largest single donor, contributing between $400 million and $500 million annually to the Geneva-based agency in recent years.
The President has repeatedly labelled COVID-19 the “Chinese virus” and criticized the U.N. health agency for being too lenient on China, where the novel virus first emerged late last year.
Outside experts have questioned China’s reported infections and deaths from the virus, calling them way too low and unreliable. And an investigation by The Associated Press has found that six days of delays between when Chinese officials knew about the virus and when they warned the public allowed the pandemic to bloom into an enormous public health disaster.
The WHO has been particularly effusive in its praise for China, calling on other countries to emulate their approach and repeatedly praising their transparency, ABC News added.
However, China only agreed to a proposed WHO-led mission to investigate the coronavirus outbreak after WHO’s chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus personally paid a visit to Chinese President Xi Jinping, a highly unusual move to secure a country visit during an outbreak.
The European Union on Wednesday said Trump has “no reason” to freeze WHO funding at this critical stage and called for measures to promote unity instead of division. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the 27-nation bloc “deeply” regrets the suspension of funds and added that the U.N. health agency is now “needed more than ever” to combat the pandemic.
Borrell said “only by joining forces can we overcome this crisis that knows no borders.”
Even though the EU and the U.S. have been traditional allies for decades, the EU has increasingly been critical of the Trump administration over the past years.
Worldwide, the pandemic has infected nearly 2 million people and killed over 127,000, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. The virus is spread by microscopic droplets expelled into the air or left on surfaces when people sneeze or cough.
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